Fertile Soil

Our landlords are successful Zambian soy bean and wheat farmers and this week marks a special time of year for them:  Harvest!!!.  This afternoon, the kids were invited to go swimming and wrestling in the first fruits of the soy bean harvest.

As you can see from the pictures, they had a lot of fun.  Ours, the Reeve's and the Whitfield's children spent a better part of the afternoon jumping, wrestling, and making all kinds of games up amongst the soy beans.

Watching them made me think of the parable of the seed in the book of Matthew.  Jesus is talking about seed and where it fell.  He said that some fell beside the road and the birds came and ate them up.  Others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil.  But when the sun had risen, they were scorched and because they had no root, they withered away.  Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out.  And others fell on the good soil and yeilded a crop, some a hundred fold, some sixty, and some thirty.

Seeing this crop today, I know that the soil for these soy beans was good soil, because it produced a bountiful crop.  But what about the soil of your heart?  If you live in the west, most likely, you have already been affected by the seed of the gospel.  You have heard about Jesus.  You know that he died for your sins.  You know that to become a Christian means to trust Him with your whole life relinquishing your rights to His will.  

So, how is your soil?  Is your heart a receptive and fertile field for his Word to grow in?  Or you one of the other recipients of His word as described in the book of Matthew?  Something to ponder for today!